Thursday, April 2, 2009

Pay cuts May 1

Letter from Decherd today:
On Tuesday, the Board of Directors approved my recommendation to reduce my base salary by 20 percent and the base salaries of other Management Committee members
by 15 percent, effective immediately. In addition, all full-time employees making more than $25,000 per year will have reductions in base salary as follows:

Base Salary % Reduction
$25,000 and under 0 %
$25,001 - $74,999 2.5 %
$75,000 - $102,499 5.0 %
$102,500 - $149,999 7.5 %
$150,000 - $225,000 10 %
Over $225,000 15 %

These changes will be effective starting in the payroll cycles on or near May 1. The annual savings represented by these reductions exceed $10 million.
Also:
To cushion the impact of the wage cuts, all impacted employees will receive three additional personal days per calendar year, effective at the time of the salary reductions.

So no furloughs at this point? There may be another shoe to drop, though. The letter ends: "I will communicate with you again soon."

11 comments:

  1. Maybe the context clues were there, and I missed them or didn't buy them. Someone please set me straight.

    I saw no language specifically indicating the three personal days were paid.

    Cushioning impact of wage cuts? Three days off would let me blow off steam, yes. But I will enjoy them considerably less if they are unpaid.

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  2. "To cushion the impact of the wage cuts, all impacted employees will receive three additional personal days per calendar year, effective at the time of the salary reductions." wouldn't be much of a cushion if these personal days were unpaid.

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  3. What does the June 30th reference mean? Are there more layoffs coming after the ones next week?

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  4. In response to the previous post, I read it to mean that there may be more layoffs besides the ones next week if the company's outlook does not improve. So, this certainly may not be the only round of layoffs this year or in the near future.

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  5. Anyone else hope that Bobby D ends up handing out copies of Quick on the street corner? Why have no VPs lost their jobs yet? They saw this coming nearly 20 years ago and never made any serious attempts to change the business model. So glad I'm gone.

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  6. Pity the guy or gal making $75,000 vs. the guy or gal making $74,999. The person making LESS after the cuts will end up making about $1,800 MORE than their formerly higher-paid colleague thanks to the silly graduated scale of this reduction.

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  7. OK, Mr. Smart Mathematician: What would be a way to graduate the cuts so that the impact is higher on the better-paid where you *wouldn't* have this kind of situation?

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  8. I can't believe I'm going to take a 15% pay cut! Thank goodness for bonuses

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  9. According to Dave Ellet at BI our cuts are on Tuesday. Thanks BI managment good to know you all are in the loop!

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  10. I heard Ellet's advice to BI was to "go get drunk." That's the same stellar advice he gave us during the layoff shortly after he took over. Dude, get a new line - it's not funny anymore! I'm so frakin' glad to be out of that cluster!

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  11. I thought it would be more than that. I get a 2.5 percent cut. Thought it would be at least 5.

    Not that I'm happy. We've already lost a lot with the 401K contribution cut and now we have to pay for parking.

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